Collected here together for the first time in one beautiful volume are the stories of an expert practitioner of the shorter form. Spanning five decades of writing, The Love Object takes the most memorable and successful stories from collections like A Scandalous Woman and Saints and Sinners; stories such as 'Shovel Kings', 'Irish Revel', 'Lantern Slides' and 'Paradise' that have bewitched generation after generation.
Referred to in the New York Review of Books by Harold Bloom as 'the short story master', Edna O'Brien's stories are a cumulative portrait of a nation, seen from within and without. Here you will find stories about families, feuds, love and land; enchantment, disenchantment, and throughout, the manifold bonds of love. Here are stories about the tension between country and city life, the instinct towards escape and nostalgia for home; and always the shimmering, potent prose.
Edna O'Brien writes the most beautiful, aching stories of any writer, anywhere. -- Alice Munro
It was not just that her writing was fierce and beautiful . . . The taboo-breaking, the fabulous prose - there's no one like Edna O'Brien. -- Anne Enright
One of the last great lights of the golden age of Irish literature ...Her words just burned through me, alive with feeling and beauty and want. -- Eimear McBride
Glittering energy . . . Exemplary. -- Colm Tóibín
The consummate writer . . . Beautiful. -- John Boyne
Brilliant and brave. -- Ann Patchett
A profound intelligence spurred on by a tangible, fizzing joy . . . Surprising and beautiful and courageous .. A beacon of a particular kind of brazenness and defiance. -- Megan Nolan
O'Brien anatomises with a forensic eye the yearning for love ... Extraordinary power. ― The Times
A shining example of a master at work. ― Observer
As well as being an intensely enjoyable book, it is a very important publication in the history of Irish literature .. An outstanding collection. ― Irish Times
About the Author
Edna O'Brien wrote more than twenty celebrated works of fiction, including her classic The Country Girls Trilogy, as well as plays and four works of non-fiction, which have been translated internationally into over 30 territories. Her final novel was the acclaimed Girl, which was awarded the Kerry Group Prize for Fiction in 2020. She was the recipient of many awards, including the Irish PEN Lifetime Achievement Award, the American National Arts Gold Medal, the Frank O'Connor Prize, the PEN/Nabokov Award For Achievement in International Literature, and the David Cohen Prize for Literature, as well as being appointed an honorary Dame of the Order of the British Empire in 2018. In 2021, O'Brien was also awarded the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Born and raised in the west of Ireland, she lived in London for many years before her death on 27th July 2024.
